Big Finish Reviews+ The Syndicate Master Plan Series 8, Vol 2 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’ll be over here in the corner, weeping like a loon, if you need him.

Oh boy…

When we left the Fourth Doctor he was busy being killed by a relic of his remote past – or at least a relic of his remote past: the next generation, in both a moment of personal vengeance, and an advancement of the plans of the mysterious ‘Syndicate.’ We still had very little by way of concrete evidence of what those plans might be, but they involved a planet familiar to the First Doctor, some deeply overgrown plant life, and some truly demented goings-on in the name of science.

Time’s Assassin, by Guy Adams, takes us briskly on from there, giving us more of a clue as to some temporal shenanigans, ssssort of killing the Doctor and having him have to negotiate and rebel his way back to the land of the living and oh yes – revealing something utterly mind-boggling about his new companion, Police Constable Ann Kelso, from 1978 Earth.

You’re gonna want to strap in for this one.

Time’s Assassin allows for some characters – in fact, for many characters – to reveal the full extent of their almost moustache-twirling madness and grotesquerie, and some of the cast grab that opportunity with both hands (special hat-tip to Blake Ritson as Elmore on that score), and you’re left with a sense of something in the Caves of Androzani/Vengeance On Varos mould, in that nice people, even vaguely redeemable people, are desperately thin on the ground, leaving the Doctor, Ann and of course K9 seeming bright and shiny and lovely by comparison.

Except – for the reasons that make you strap in – you’re going to be worried about the future.

Fever Island, by Jonathan Barnes, is one of those classic ‘We’ve got an ongoing crisis here, but let’s take time out to do something completely different’ episodes. The plans of the Syndicate might be gathering pace after the events of Time’s Assassin, but here, the Doctor and Ann find themselves on a remote Scottish island, with plot-narrating secret special agent Jason Vane, who’s trying to stop the evil Okulov in his tracks while mugging to the imaginary camera and being casually sexist. What this is of course is a love letter to the ITC dramas of the Sixties and Seventies, from The Avengers to more blatantly outrageous fare like The Persuaders and Department S, while acknowledging the absurdities of the sub-genre as it goes. Along the way there’s a gas weapon of mass…oddness, the Doctor turned bad, the power of imagination and some affectionate jabs at the stereotypes of strong-jawed secret agent heroes and their sexist and overly confident swagger through their fictional lives. Fever Island is a detour from the dark plotting of the Syndicate, but precisely because it takes us away from the internecine, double-knotted convolutions of that organisation, it’s probably the most fun and the quickest listen in the set. Dark fun, to be sure – but fun nonetheless.

And then, it’s eyes down and no stopping for a two-part, two-hour finale to the Syndicate storyline, The Perfect Prisoners by John Dorney.

Erm…

There’s not really any way around this. John Dorney’s gonna break your hearts. However many you have.

He’s not going to rush to do that though, he’s going to give you quite the black and white space-drama serial, updated with newish (to us) virtual reality technology and a touch of meta-fiction, as things that may have happened may possibly have happened before, and the world or indeed the cosmos as you experience it might not in fact be the way it ‘really’ is, if any such concept can be said to be valid. There’s some gloriously savage metaphor in here, in slave worlds which, in the blink of a distracted eye, seem no longer to exist, and the reality of what’s going on feels slippery under your feet for some of the journey of these last two episodes. There’s also, it has to be said, a reveal that you should, and might, guess in advance, but which will nevertheless make you gasp when you reach it. There’s redemption, and choosing sides, and winning through in the end.

And then…

And then there’s the end.

Y’know? The point where he breaks your hearts. You might be ready for it when it comes – and the cunning devil’s taken that into consideration too, and has a character speak your rational Who-fan arguments back at you.

They’re no good. They won’t fly. He’s going to break your hearts.

So…yay. There’s that to look forward to.

The Fourth Doctor Series 8B has more of a frantic, elevated pace to it than 8A did – as you’d expect of the second half of a series arc, where strands are drawn together, surprise reveals keep you guessing and – not that I’m bitter or anything, but – your heart is utterly, utterly broken at the end. If you bought 8A, you can’t possibly go through the rest of your life without knowing how it all turns out. Guaranteed, it’s not going to go how 8A led you to believe it would. And if you haven’t got 8A yet…you’re going to want to do that. The combined Series 8 is an episodic hymn to long ago with new colours, new ideas, Jon Culshaw playing half the cosmos, Tom Baker on fine, multi-faceted form and a great new companion from Jane Slavin. It’s the story of what might initially feel like a gang of also-rans, after the Big Bad has left the scene, and how they go about proving their villainous potential. These are villains with points to prove, scores to settle, civilisations to enslave and Time Lords to extermi- I mean, to destroy.  They’re more ghoulish and vicious than you might imagine, and they allow the Fourth Doctor and Ann Kelso to tread old ground in a new, fresh, friendly style, while they give you an adventure you can’t possibly miss.

Big Finish Reviews+ Survivors, Series 8 by Tony J Fyler

Teenagers today, says Tony.

Never meet your heroes, they say.

As Survivors moves into its eighth audio series, and extends beyond the end of the TV version into the realms of pure creativity, it’s just possible they should add ‘never meet the son you’ve been searching for across eight box sets either’ to the perennial warning.

For those just joining us…where the hell have you been till now? There was a Seventies TV show, a 21^st century updated remake, a novel by Terry ‘dystopian genius’ Nation and now, eight box sets back in the Seventies from Big Finish, so you’ve got some ground to make up. The short version is that a woman named Abby Grant survived a plague that decimated the world, and has been searching for her son, Peter, ever since. Peter was away at boarding school when ‘the Death’ struck, and has been on adventures of his own since, never actually appearing in the audio show, but heard of, tantalisingly, as a rumour, as a member of this group or that, as a corpse, and most recently as a boy soldier under the command of a man named Robert Malcolm.

Abby, in the company of her long-time friend Jenny, starts this series on a train – the ambition and prize of fellow survivor, and Jenny’s husband, Greg Preston, who has sadly snuffed it while adventuring to make the world a better place.

The train is a key asset for the beginnings of a new federation of settlements, the beginnings of a real interconnected society again, rebuilt from the ashes of the post-Death world of isolation, will to power and desperation. That…makes it valuable.

Christopher Hatherill kicks us off in Series 8 with Bandit Train, a story which is divided roughly into two halves – all action in real time for the first half, mostly thought and talking for the second half. With Abby, Jenny and their relatively new young friend Craig on the train, Bandit Train delivers what it promises – the first half is almost textbook Western, with one additional Land Rover, and it introduces us to a new power dynamic – Abby and her friends have the train and the Federation. The so-called bandits are Teenagers With Attitude, out for a bit of not-so-great train robbery. The owner of the Land Rover – a glittering impossibility in an England that’s mostly returned to a pre-industrial technological level – is Captain Robert Malcolm and his boy soldiers, which raises Abby’s hopes at the same rate as her heartbeat. Has she finally found Peter? Is she about to have the long dreamed-of reunion with her little boy?

Don’t be silly, this is Survivors, moments of unalloyed joy are few and far between.

Christopher Hatherill has a distinct knack of taking single incidents and stretching them out, believably and more engagingly than you’d imagine was possible, while dealing realistically with the practical problems the incident raises and wringing every drop of sweat and tension out of them. In one of his previous episodes, for instance, we spent most of the run-time in a big hole in the ground, exploring the annoyances, the terrors and the pains of being stuck in a big hole in the ground. There’s a touch of that sweaty realism about Bandit Train too – the first half of the story has that Western vibe of raiders on horseback and riders on a train shooting actual bullets at each other as though their very lives depend on possession of the transport – which in some cases they do. Again, this is Survivors – with a gloriously sick interpretation of the title, people die here, for the sake of train ownership.

The second half of the story is equally sweaty but far more delicate, as we learn the reality of the power balances in the region. Is Robert Malcolm all he seems to be? Or is he just another in the seemingly endless line of tin-pot local dictators against whom our heroes are destined to come up?

It would be telling to answer that question, but there’s something about Robert that takes us back to the early, sharp-end days of the Survivors series. He may be trying to do the right thing by his boys, but does that necessarily make him a good man?

Here’s the thing about Survivors – or indeed about any post-apocalyptic drama. The further away you get from the initial point that changes the world, the easier it is and the more likely you are to fall into ‘villain-of-the-week’ territory, mistrusting every friendly leader who reaches out to your group of heroes because of course they’re going to be horrible, evil gits who want nothing but harm and control underneath their happy, smiley exteriors, because that’s where the maximum drama is. Series 8 is pretty far from the collapse of the world’s infrastructure – it’s unlikely that anyone new is going to infect you with the Death, and the perils of the immediate aftermath, like rape-gangs, cannibalism, extra-apocalyptic religious grimness and so on has all been done, documented, and at least by some, survived. So Series 8 runs close by the danger of formulaic villain-of-the-week territory.

Annnnd then along comes Jane Slavin, with an episode called simply Robert. In fact, along comes Big Finish with an idea to take us behind the scenes, behind the pre-Death life of Robert Malcolm and make us face the realities of grey areas. Malcolm is a central pivot around which the action of Series 8 moves, and Jane Slavin shows us what we all instinctively know, but rarely want to face when we’re invested in a drama – that good and evil are mostly positional judgments, and the more we know about each other, the more we can understand where any action is coming from.

Slavin paints us a military man with a wife entrusted to a 1970s asylum, a girlfriend more accepting than many would be, and a life, like many in the Armed Forces, complicated by the tangle of emotion, and eased by action, by plans, by discipline and direction. When the Death catches up with Robert Malcolm, his wife is gazing adoringly at fellow patient Jesus, his girlfriend’s none too keen about a road trip with the ex-who-isn’t and a trip to the country goes healingly, happily right – and then…well, at least less right. There’s undoubtedly more to learn about Robert Malcolm, and it would probably pay dividends to get Slavin to write a second part of his backstory between this episode and when we encounter him in the main thrust of the Series 8 story-arc, but here, Hywel Morgan as Robert Malcolm takes Jane Slavin’s seemingly simple script and gives its protagonist life and layers that alter how we understand him for the rest of the set.

Oh, and - there’s no way this can go unsaid – Wendy Craig’s in this one. Wendy ‘ruler of late-Seventies-early-Eighties TV’ Craig. In fact, Big Finish gets maximum Wendy Craig magic for its money in this set, as she takes on three separate roles, and makes them each so individual, you’d never know they were the same actress, and, in all fairness, never particularly slap your forehead and go ‘It’s Wendy Craig Doing Things!’ you’re so absorbed in the reality of her performances. More Wendy Craig on audio, please, she’s a downright national treasure who’s clearly still got the knack of adding emotional reality and value to any story in which she’s cast.

Episode 3, The Lost Boys by Lisa McMullin and Episode 4, Village of Dust by Roland Moore, bring us screeching back to the ‘present’ of the Series 8 narrative, and do in fact present us with an answer to one of the series’ longest running questions – is Peter Grant, Abby’s son and the Holy Grail the search for which has kept her alive and surviving all this time…actually still alive?

Yes. Yes, he is. You can call that a spoiler if you like, but it’s in the episode-synopses and the packaging, so we can’t feel too bad about it.

But of course, Peter, like his mother, has had to survive the world of the Death. He’s by no means the seemingly innocent young boy he used to be. In fact, in Lisa McMullin’s The Lost Boys, he’s rather neatly nicknamed Pan – leader of the lost boys under Robert Malcolm’s command. And where Malcolm has had the benefit of Jane Slavin’s backstory episode to muddy the waters of his motivations for us, with Peter, there’s a sharpness, an almost evangelistic nihilism in the ways he’s found to survive – but is there any way for this Peter, the real one, rather than the dream of the young boy that Abby has carried around with her, to reconcile with the mother he feels abandoned him to the world of the Death? Is he in fact a boy too lost to find his way home?

These are questions that stretch across both the latter episodes of the set, and in Village of Dust by Roland Moore, the question is put significantly to the test as Abby, determined that her blood connection to Peter will prove stronger than the bonds he’s made since they were separated, tries to reach out to him from a childhood he barely acknowledges. The way in which the question is put involves the siege of a village we’ve visited before in the Survivors audio adventures, and foreshadows the rise of a new potential threat – Abby and Jenny have been working to build their Federation, but in Village of Dust particularly, it becomes clear that there’s another idea fighting to win the future, backed by intensely organised, well-resourced and comparatively ruthless individuals who are yet to be revealed.

It would have been easy to create Survivors Series 8 to a plotting formula – drama, death, tension, betrayal, and a clash of ideologies. There’s a degree to which all those things are present and correct in Series 8, certainly, but the care that’s taken to avoid the formulaic, to give unusual angles on what could otherwise have been stock figures and standard situations, raises it far above such easily constructed and button-pressing drama. That’s the Big Finish difference.

Here, there’s a genuine idea that maybe there are other ways to survive and build a future than anything our Survivors have imagined. There’s the argument of which is more important in shaping character, nature or nurture. There’s a love song to the complexity of humanity and how very little is as straightforward as it seems when you first meet it. And, of course, there’s a train robbery, a siege, betrayal, treachery and the rise of a new Big Potentially Very Bad, all of which is no mean feat for a series in its eighth box set. Get Survivors Series 8 because if you’ve come this far with it, you have to hear the reunion of Abby and Peter Grant. If you’re new to the series, go back and catch up, but Survivors Series 8, when you get to it, will make perfect emotional and intellectual sense, while giving you at least a moment of closure, and opening up new vistas of potential plot towards the end.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Syndicate Master Plan Vol 1 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s getting a syndicate together.

As universal legend Tom Baker turns 85, it’s time to take your unfeasibly long scarves out of mothballs and wrap ’em round your necks. The Fourth Doctor is back, and it’s 1978 all over again – only better. Less Yorkshire Ripper. Less Margaret Thatcher. More Jane Slavin. Better.

If you’ve never encountered Jane Slavin before, you’re in for a treat.

Of course, if you have encountered Jane Slavin before, you’re still in for a treat, there’s just more chance that you’ll know it before we start.

Slavin plays the first brand spanking new Fourth Doctor companion Big Finish has created, Police Constable Ann Kelso, in this eighth series of Fourth Doctor stories, and she first encounters the Fourth Doctor in The Sinestran Kill by Andrew Smith.

Andrew Smith – as you probably already know – spent decades as a police officer between initially being a clever, inventive, philosophically interesting writer…and again being a clever, inventive, philosophically interesting writer. He also has form in introducing us to new Fourth Doctor companions, having been the writer who gave Adric his first – and probably, if we’re honest, finest - couple of hours in Full Circle.

For Kelso, Smith gives us a classic ‘The Doctor investigating an anomaly’ story that pays a degree of homage to Sixties and Seventies British police drama, before becoming a thing that’s pure Andrew Smith, unpeeling reality like layers as people and aliens turn out to be more than we – or even they - think they are.

Tom Baker gets more and more brightly luminous as his time with Big Finish goes on, and the cast here gives him the leeway to be the mercurial Fourth Doctor, while never underselling the reality of their characters’ lives. Listen out for Ewan Bailey and Glynis Barber as gang bosses Hugo and Kathy Blake particularly, but as is frequently the case in New Who, it’s the new companion actor who’s given most time and space to show us why both the actor and the character, deserve a place on board the Tardis. Slavin’s Kelso is practical, level-headed, not one to freak out in a bizarre alien crisis when people are swapping skins, chasing her through Scotland Yard or, for reasons of which they’re not entirely sure, turning out to be really keen to assassinate mild-mannered shop owners. Where Kelso comes in the pantheon of the Fourth Doctor’s friends, only time will tell, but it’s clear that Slavin and Baker have a tremendous friendly chemistry which translates to the drama and lets you easily accept PC Kelso as a fellow traveller in time and space. Above all, she comes across as being useful in the stories in this first set, as though, while the Doctor was off being all clever and smiley and ultimately saving everyone, you could stick with Kelso and she’d keep you alive.

Phil Mulryne’s Planet of the Drashigs is a simple, glorious joy ride. It’s Jurassic Park – with Drashigs. But Mulryne gives you your money’s worth of invention. We’re only familiar with the Drashigs from Carnival Of Monsters, where they were huge and crawly and with the heads of Hell’s Jack Russells – but just as in Jurassic Park, there wasn’t just one kind of big scaly bugger to run away from or be fascinated by, Mulryne invents a gorgeous array of Drashigs (really rather forcefully making the case for a TV re-do with 21^st century visuals) – there are the big scary swampy Drashigs we know and run from, but there are also (get this, it’s terrifying) albino, burrowing, take the legs out from under you Drashigs (surely the stuff of Lair of the White Drashig sequels?), and then there are the smaller, pack-hunting Emerald Drashigs – the velociraptors of the story – who are a bit too damned clever for your own good if you happen to be trapped in a reserve with them.

Phil Mulryne takes the terrifying prospect of a reserve full of multiple Drashig-types and adds even more layering though – it’s not just ‘Let’s run away from Drashigs for an hour.’ The Jurassic Park style disaster movie depends on the intellectual hubris of humanity, and with the Drashigs, Mulryne invents freely, giving us new reasons to be fascinated by the terrifying predators, and also adds a dimension that takes them beyond the howling nightmare they’ve previously been. Fenella Woolgar shines as Vanessa Seaborne, a lynchpin to the new dimension of the Drashigs, and listen out too for Lizzie Roper playing somewhat against vocal type as Trencher. There’s also a practically unrecognisable touch of audio-helper Dan Starkey here, adding a whole new string to his bow. Big Finish has a strong history of reinventing one-hit wonder TV monsters and villains and taking them forward in exciting ways, and with this story, Phil Mulryne writes himself into the pantheon as Drashig-Master. More, in future, would be really rather fun. After all, it’s not as though the Jurassic Park franchise stopped after a single outing, and with the new elements Mulryne brings to them here, there’s little reason why the Drashigs too couldn’t expand their place in the Doctor Who universe in some genuinely interesting ways.

Next up, Simon Barnard and Paul Morris give us a celebrity historical story that’s far more than the sum of its parts, The Enchantress of Numbers. When you learn that the most central of its parts is Ada Lovelace, mathematical genius and one of the world’s first computer programmers, it’s probably enough to tell you to strap in. There are all sorts of mad, wonderful, referential elements here, as well as a fundamental storyline that’s elegantly timey-wimey (imagine the Terminator doing advanced mathematics to save its world and you’re onto something), and yet at its core, heartbreakingly human. In terms of the story dynamics, it’s also a solid example of the ‘Doctor and Companion Do Upstairs Downstairs’ model, as the Doctor hobnobs with Ada on trips to the church to pay tribute to her father, (the sheer force of bad behaviour that was Lord Byron), and to the tavern to fleece the locals at cards, while Ann goes downstairs to investigate maids, butlers and secret tunnels that may or may not exist at any given time. There’s a chance the timey-wimey mathy-wathiness of the plot might slip by you towards the end, but that just means it repays a second listen, and it ends with a lovely moment of classic Tom Baker era fun, reminiscent of City of Death. For listeners who love their stories to drip with warm, delicate characterisation, Finty Williams’ Ada will probably make The Enchantress of Numbers the highlight of the set.

And Series 8 part 1 ends on a solidly retrospective note with The False Guardian by Guy Adams. The Doctor and Ann land in the grounds of exclusive spa-cum-asylum-cum-prison, tangle with Varga plants (Oh yes, nostalgia-fans, this has your name written all over it), and meet a patient named Nigel Colloon who thinks he’s someone else entirely. The creepiness factor in this story is high, and there are dark deeds behind the hot stone massages. Kelso gets to show off her rather-more-than-beat-cop analytical and sneakiness skills as she goes wandering purposefully off, and the story ends on a mid-season cliff-hanger which both raises the nostalgia factor three more notches and begins to make you wonder about the whole ‘Syndicate Master Plan’ sub-title of the series. What’s more, John Shrapnel plays Colloon – even if you can’t immediately place his face, two or three words of ‘that voice’ and you’ll know who he is and be more than happy to spend an adventure in his company.

The Series 8A box set is a must-get audio because Tom Baker remains a solidly quintessential Doctor, seeming if anything to get better as he ages. Jane Slavin was born to be a companion to his Doctor and Ann Kelso manages to show us lots of fun, sensible companion action, while seeming like there’s still lots we want to get to know about her. And the writers here have given us a smorgasbord of Who-styles – from Smith’s alien gang warfare hiding in plain sight through Mulryne’s Reinvention of the Drashigs and Barnard and Morris’ sensitive celebrity historical, to Adams’ update on some nostalgic notes set on a world of gruesome body horror and professional smiles. Everyone serves the work, and the work serves the legend of the Fourth Doctor, while introducing us to a great new companion who has more to give.

Who Reviews Death in Heaven by Jeffrey Zyra

By Steven Moffat

“You Win.”

After the big reveal in Dark Water that Missy was The Master we are now onto the second part of the series 8 finale.  Usually the second part of the series finales or series finales in general have fallen short and not delivered on the hype built up by the first part.   Doctor Who has been a good example of this most recently with The Wedding of River Song which was not all that good.  It seems in NuWho that the show runners like to go for the big gusto and try to cram a lot of stuff into the finales and that has always hurt the story for the most part even if the newer fans go crazy for it.  So did Death in Heaven fall into the disappointing category?

Now I had the good opportunity to watch Death in Heaven at the Long Island Doctor Who Convention LI Who 2.  I was there this past weekend and it was a pretty good experience getting to see and hear the fans expressions once the story was over.   This was pretty cool as you could clearly see who enjoyed it and who did not clearly like it.  Have to say this I felt sorry for the Osgood cosplayers in attendance as there were quite a few in attendance Saturday night.  The majority of the fans enjoyed it and listening to their reactions was a really good experience.

My opinion on Death in Heaven for the most part I really enjoyed it and thought it was one of the better series finales in a long time.  I enjoyed seeing the Cybermen flying and adding that element to their arsenal made them that more menacing.  Just watching them attack the airplane was pretty creepy.  Also having them taking dead people and making them Cybermen was frightening if not a bit creepy.  I liked seeing them popping out of the ground at the cemeteries. It was definitely a different feel to the Cybermen as the dead had their conscious put back into their new Cyberman body but what was puzzling me was why Danny did not have his emotions suppressed.  When he woke up in Chaplets funeral parlor, how many classic Who fans made the connection with Dodo, he seemed to know what was going on and proceeded to save Clara.  Was it his love for Clara or was this a result of not pressing delete. I don’t know but it wasn’t really explained either.

I really liked Michelle Gomez as The Master.  She was way better than the John Simm Master and not quite as over the top as he was.  Yes she seemed to have her crazy ways a little bit like John Simms Master but she appeared to be more grounded in her performance.   He had her moments but it does seem that the days of The Master being serious and threatening like Roger Delgado are over and that we will be having Masters that like to be silly.  But I did like Michelle Gomez as she was evil.  She had no problem killing anyone even fan favorite Osgood.  She was pretty ruthless and there was good chemistry between her and Peter Capaldi something we haven’t seen since Pertwee and Delgado for Doctor/Villain battle of the wits.  I hope they bring her back as we all know The Master is never dead for long. 

I did like the swerve at the beginning with Clara saying she was The Doctor.  They even went so far as having Jenna Coleman’s name come first and have her eyes in the opening.  I bet a lot of people were screaming “What!” at their TV.  I think Moffat is having a good time playing up the female Doctor and with a female Master he must have thought it would be funny to try and get the fans riled up by having Clara say she was The Doctor.  If you didn’t think she was doing that to save her life then you got punked by the Moff.   I was pretty sure that is what he was doing but there were some at the convention that were taken.

I really liked the ending for Death in Heaven.  I liked how The Doctor out maneuvered The Master.  The love between Danny and Clara was pretty strong to prevent the Cybermen conditioning to take effect over Danny.  We have seen it before with Craig fighting the conditioning in Closing Time so it is possible.  It was the perfect way to prevent The Masters plans from taking fruition by using Danny to sacrifice himself to save the earth.  The Master more or less gave The Doctor the means to stopping her by allowing Danny to take control of the Cybermen army.  Yes it was anticlimactic but it worked.  It was a pretty clever way to saving the day and to give Danny a hero’s send off that also could make amends for what he did in the army.  He also did again later on when he sent the boy he killed back to the land of the living. 

I admit I did like having the Cyberman Brigadier save The Doctor from having to be a killer.  He has done this before and this time it was so unexpected that it made me smile with delight that we got to see the Brigadier in action one more time even if it was as a Cyberman.  It was good to see The Doctor finally say goodbye to his old friend for the last time by giving him the salute he so rightly deserved.  It was truly a great moment for Series 8.

We say goodbye to Clara in this episode, as what was a poorly guarded secret, she leaves The Doctor.  Companions come and go all the time but I really liked Clara and thought she grew as a character this series more so than the last series.  I liked Jenna Coleman’s performance during series 8 and thought she and Peter Capaldi had really good chemistry.  Peter Capaldi was really good in Death in Heaven and probably gave us one of his finest performances during this two part story.  I especially liked how he performed the scene when he lost his temper when he went to where Gallifrey was and found it wasn’t there.  You could really see that anguish in his face and you could totally believe that The Doctor was hurt by what he saw.  

Death in Heaven was a very entertaining and gripping story which capped off a wonderful season.  Peter Capaldi has definitely come into his own as The Doctor and you can tell that he was born to play The Doctor.   Dark Water/Death in Heaven is by far one of my favorite Finales and one of the best in a long time.

Grade A

Who Reviews Dark Water by Jeffrey Zyra

By Steven Moffat

“Upload the mind. Upgrade the body.”

The series 8 Finale is here and part one Dark Water was the one that would reveal who Missy is.  Oh boy and did it.  I’m still getting my mind around it.  Even though who she ended up as was one of the three I had guessed it would be I just didn’t think Steven Moffat would go in that direction.  But he did and now we know who Missy is and that sets up a whole lot of speculation until we see Death in Heaven this Saturday.

Dark Water starts out with Clara talking to Danny on the phone and she starts to explain things to Danny and more or less tells him that she loves him.  This results in Danny Pink getting hit by a car and killed.  Yep Danny Pink is dead and it is because he did not look when crossing the road as that revelation in their relationship startled him into making that mistake.  With Danny now dead Clara tries to blackmail The Doctor into going back in time and to save Danny.  This does not work as The Doctor tricked Clara.  He decides to forgive her and decides to help her by trying to find Danny in the afterlife.  

What they end up finding when they arrive is much more than they expected. They find lots of dead bodies in Dark Water which shows through non organic material to reveal a skeleton.  These end up being Cybermen and there are tons of them all asleep in their tombs.  Also in this Nethersphere is Danny Pink or so we think as he is actually in a Matrix type device. It appears that the soul of the dead are trapped in this device and then sent to the body of a Cyberman.  This tips The Doctor off that Missy is in fact a Time Lord or to be precise a certain Time Lord enemy of The Doctor.  Missy turns out to be short for Mistress and tells The Doctor that she can’t keep calling herself The Master anymore.  So the big reveal is that Missy is in fact The Master.  If you had that prediction congratulations but I don’t believe you if you did say it as most everyone said that she would be The Rani. 

I don’t know if I’m ok with what happened to The Master.  After watching Dark Water it took me a while to wrap my head around what just happened.  There was quite a bit going on in the first part of the finale that I had to watch it again for fear of missing something.  But the thing that sticks out is that The Master is now female.  I guess I’m ok with it as it was a good twist and the reaction conveyed by Peter Capaldi made it that more believable and really sold the whole reveal for me.  I guess it was pretty ballsy for Steven Moffat to do this as he could have just made Missy The Rani or had her be an evil Romana.  Still it was mind blowing when it happened even though I did have a slight inkling that it would be the evil renegade Time Lord.  Like I said before it will be interesting to read the speculation to why The Master is now Missy and Twitter will be in overload until Death in Heaven.

Dark Water was actually as the first part of the title describes dark.  This story was pretty dark and grim.  It starts off with Danny getting killed and Clara going through the denial of mourning her lost lover and then there is all that business in the Nethersphere.   It was pretty dark and creepy especially when the skeletons started to move in their tombs as the heads moved to watch The Doctor and Clara walk by.  That was indeed spooky and pretty awesome also.  Even though you knew beforehand that the skeletons are Cybermen it still was scary to see and was just pretty cool to see. 

This story will also be pretty controversial.  It deals with dead people and what happens when they die and where they go.  But what will really get people angry is the three words that was discovered that the dead souls were saying.  “Don’t cremate me” will hit hard for some people and also creep a lot of people out.  It will be hard for people who have recently lost someone and had a funeral in which there was a cremation.   I haven’t lost anyone close to me for a few years and it creeped me out.  I mean really creeped me out.  I know this is science fiction and not real but it really started me thinking what if.  It was a controversial scene and I give Steven Moffat and the BBC for doing it as they will most likely catch some slack. 

I really enjoyed Dark Water and I’m really excited for its conclusion Death in Heaven.  Dark Water answered some questions like what Danny did wrong as a soldier and that was a pretty dark reveal.  It made the Cybermen scary again, well at least for 45 minutes, and I just loved the nods to the classic Cybermen stories of the Troughton era with the tombs and of course St. Pauls Cathedral.  I liked the evil streak in Clara and wondered if she would really throw the keys into the lava and was surprised when it was revealed that The Doctor had tricked her.  I loved the darkness of this story and loved the tone it sets for the finale.  I’m really intrigued by the Missy reveal and really liked the chances they have taken this series especially with a female Master.  It is still a Steven Moffat story so with all that was right in Dark Water could be destroyed and be a major let down when Death in Heaven airs.  I just hope Steven Moffat doesn’t blow it and gives us something exciting to talk about until Christmas.

Grade A

Who Reviews Flatline by Jeffrey Zyra

Written by Jamie Mathieson

"I don't know whether you're here to invade, infiltrate, or just replace us. I don't suppose it really matters now. You are monsters! That is the role you seem determined to play. So it seems that I must play mine: The man that stops the monsters."

When Steven Moffat told writer of Kill the Moon Peter Harness to Hinchcliffe the $#@% out of it I don’t think he meant that one story but I believe he meant Series 8 in general.  In fact Flatline is the closest a new Who story has come to achieving this and it would make Robert Holmes smile.  I’m sure he is smiling from heaven as Jamie Mathieson has so far been able to replicate his style of horror in Doctor Who.

I liked his previous story Mummy on the Orient Express but I really was blown away with his second Who story this series Flatline.  Flatline was a really clever episode in my opinion and I really liked how it all worked out.  I really liked the atmosphere of this story as it was pretty scary and intense with some really good horror scenes.  For example it was really scary seeing PC Forrest meeting her demise.  Being sucked into the floor was chilling and then seeing her nervous system on the wall was creepy.  But it got better as Clara and Rigsy were now trapped in that room facing certain death.  Seeing the tension and terror on Clara and Rigsy’s face really made the scene and it reminded me of the way they used horror back in the Classic Series.  It had that type of feel to it and I saw quite a few similarities in the storytelling.  You had horror, a monster, smart storytelling and The Doctor using his intelligence to figure out a solution.  This was Doctor Who at its finest and something that has been lacking in the last 9 years since the show has returned.

I really like the way they have been developing Clara this series.  I have been a little bit critical of the way Clara has taken center stage at times but in Flatline it worked really well.   I really liked the way Clara handled the situation.  It reminded me of how the Virgin New Adventures were and how the companion was the main character with The Doctor in the background.  What made it more effective was that The Doctor was trapped in the TARDIS and practically useless and had to rely on Clara for everything from sight to sound.   What sold the plot was being able to see The Doctor helpless and out of his comfort zone.  It made the whole situation with Clara in charge more believable and seeing him trapped in the TARDIS trying to figure things out with Clara being the detective was a key point in making this story that much better.

I thought Flatline was one of the best performances from Jenna Coleman.  We did not have any of that angst that has surrounded her lately and it was good to see her just be a normal companion.  I did like how she was portraying herself as The Doctor and it worked really well as at times she did seem very Doctorish.  Her performance was pretty believable and I do say this has been my favorite Clara story so far.  Plus Clara figured out how to save the day in Doctor style by using her brain and using the enemy’s power to her advantage. 

I really liked the monster in this story.  It was clever to have a monster from another dimension invade Earth by living in the walls.  The Boneless were pretty creepy and even though the CGI version was ok but nothing special to look at especially when they took shape but as the slugs in the wall is where I thought they worked.   Even though the human looking ones were ok CGI it did not harm the overall storyline or enjoyment of Flatline.  What Doctor Who is good at is using normal everyday objects like WIFI and now walls and make them scary and menacing as it gives us something to think twice about.

Flatline is was a really great episode and is definitely in my top three favorite stories so far from Series 8.  It was a really good story with lots of scares and it had a really clever science fiction feel to it also.  It just worked on so many levels and it is so far the closest thing we have had to a Classic Who episode since the show has returned in 2005.  A marvelous episode and I hope Jamie Mathieson will be back to write for Doctor Who again.

Grade A

Who Reviews The Caretaker by Jeffrey Zyra

By Gareth Roberts and Steven Moffat

Reviewed by Jeffrey Zyra

“Well you’ve explained me to him but you haven’t explained him to me.”

Gareth Roberts who wrote the 11^th Doctor stories The Lodger and Closing Time returns and gives us his first 12^th Doctor story The Caretaker.  I enjoyed Gareth Roberts 11^th Doctor stories with Craig as they were fun to watch and had a bit of comedy to them.  Not too much comedy and the stories were usually pretty good with The Lodger being the stronger of the two stories.  The trailer for The Caretaker did look like it would be a funny lighthearted story which for the way the series has gone lately would be a good change considering Series 8 has by far been the darkest since the show has returned.   The Caretaker sees The Doctor going deep undercover at Coal Hill School where Clara works to fend off an alien that can destroy the Earth.  What follows is anything but stellar.

I don’t mind when Doctor Who does a funny story every once in a while.  One of my favorites is The Romans and that William Hartnell story was played for laughs for the most part but did keep a sense of seriousness to it.  What I do not like is when Doctor Who goes to the soap opera angle.  Soap Opera stuff should be kept to shows like East Enders and General Hospital.  I really did not like it during the Russell T. Davies era and I did not like it in this story.  I did not like the whole backstory of Clara and Danny and having to explain their relationship to The Doctor and vice versa.  Instead of the jealous boyfriend we have The Doctor being the concerned fatherly figure.  Which is ok I guess but having this part of the series now doesn’t really do it for me.  I like to watch Doctor Who for the adventure and to see how The Doctor will save everyone from the situation at hand.  If I wanted romance and relationship issues I would watch a soap opera or a romantic comedy not Doctor Who.

Here is one part of The Caretaker that didn’t really make much sense.  Why did The Doctor choose a school to trap The Skovox Blitzer?  Couldn’t he just have picked a deserted warehouse or factory to use to it in instead of the school?  It doesn’t seem very Doctor like to trap an alien at a school where lots of innocents could get hurt especially if the innocents where children.  Yes I know he did plan to do it at night when everyone went home but as we see The Skovox Blitzer returned during the evening when the school was filled for parent’s night.  The only motive was strictly back to the soap opera angle and he wanted to see what Clara was up to and who her boyfriend was even if it wasn’t the Matt Smith look alike.  Which at first I did not like but then we found out what he really was later on now.  I’m intrigued a little bit more about this development.

 As I said earlier I do like it when Doctor Who is funny at times and The Caretaker did have some funny moments.  I liked the way The Doctor was teasing Clara and the exchanges he had with her.  Especially the way he teased her about Jane Austin and when she wrote Pride and Prejudice.  I have to admit the chemistry between Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi is really good and it harkens me back to how well Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen got on.  The funny and silliness of the story was not to over the top and did not really dampen the story too much.  Just the soap opera bit even though it was character development for Danny.

I was disappointed that the whole saving the planet from the The Skovox Blitzer was nothing but a sidebar for The Caretaker.  I would have liked it better if that part took center stage like he did in Closing Time with the Cybermat.  It just seems that some of the stories seem to be concentrating on Clara.  I think she has grown as a companion and come into her own but it shouldn’t be the Clara show with her old Scottish sidekick The Doctor.  Not saying all the stories have been like that but so far we are on story six and it feels like half of the stories have been the Clara show. 

But for the most The Caretaker was an alright episode that did have a cool looking alien in The Skovox Blitzer and I did like the comedy exchanges.  We also got more of a hint into whom Missy could be and that Adrian isn’t all that he seems.  I did like Peter Capaldi’s performance as that was the highlight of the story for me and was its saving grace.  Plus the fact that he made a gadget to stop The Skovox Blitzer and once again used his brain to stop the bad guy instead of zapping it with his sonic screwdriver.   While The Caretaker was a disappointment mainly to the soap opera nature of the story I did find myself entertained at the fun bits of the story and it did hold my interest.  Not the finest but not the worst.

Grade C

Who Reviews Robot of Sherwood by Jeffrey Zyra

By Mark Gatiss

Series 8

“Shut it, Hoody!”

Being a fan of Robin Hood I was somewhat lukewarm to the prospect of Doctor Who doing an episode centered on him and Sherwood Forest and the overall Robin Hood legend. That and the writer for this episode was Mark Gatiss who has been really hit or miss with his stories.  In Series 7 he wrote the good “Cold War” and the very bad “The Crimson Horror.” So he now delivers to us his next story “Robot of Sherwood” and from looking at the trailers it could be one that could very well be uneventful and not all that good.

Well I have to say that I surprisingly actually liked and enjoyed “Robot of Sherwood.”   Robot of Sherwood was an episode that did not take itself seriously and that is why it worked as a Doctor Who story.  Sometimes Doctor Who has to be funny and light hearted especially when you are going in the direction of being darker.  Robot of Sherwood fit that bill very well and it also wasn’t overly silly. Well maybe it was a tad silly.  At times it felt like a Black Adder episode.  I could see Rowan Atkinson doing the scenes in the dungeon where Robin Hood and The Doctor were chained to each other.   Those scenes were pretty good and were performed really well by Peter Capaldi and Tom Riley.  In fact this story was pretty funny and found myself laughing through it a lot which doesn’t normally happen when you watch Doctor Who and for it once it was ok to have a story this different and funny and I am glad they tried something different again this week.

If you are a fan, as I am, of the Errol Flynn “The Adventures of Robin Hood” which came out in 1938 you’ll be happy to see a lot from that movie made it into this episode.  Like the fight on the river and the archery contest it was all there. If you’re going to do a Robin Hood episode you do need to have some of his familiar exploits.  Even the fight at the end of with the Sheriff of Nottingham was sort of in the same vein as the one from the Errol Flynn movie.  I did like the sword fight at the beginning.  The Doctor using the spoon and bragging on how he was trained by the best was pretty funny and you knew how it would end up.  It was funny seeing The Doctor getting pushed into the water after beating Robin Hood with the spoon.  What shouldn’t go unnoticed is that there is also a cameo by Patrick Troughton as Robin Hood from when he played him in the 1953 TV series which in itself was pretty cool thing to see.

I could see “Robot of Sherwood” fitting in the Tom Baker era. In fact it kind of reminded me of that era when I was watching it.   It had that type of feel to it with the comedy and then seriousness.  Especially when The Doctor is confronting the Sheriff and trying to deduce his plans and saying a bunch of silly nonsense that does not make sense and then figuring it out that is was nonsense.  That was purely a 4^th Doctor moment.  Plus just the way The Doctor presented himself made it feel like a 4^th Doctor story especially with him bragging about Robin Hood not existing and then seeing the arrow go into the TARDIS.  It sure looked like Peter Capaldi was channeling his inner Tom Baker.

The story on a whole was pretty simple.  Robots have crashed landed on Earth and using the habitants as slaves to help repair the ship. This time using them to collect gold and melting it down so it can be used into making new circuits for the ship so it can continue to the promise land.  Not a very original idea and one that has been done before in Doctor Who and in fact better than “Robot of Sherwood”.  But it was till enjoyable and did not really detract from the fun of seeing Robin Hood and The Doctor interacting and bickering with one another.  Have to say the robot knights looked pretty good and I thought they were pretty neat especially when they revealed their faces. 

Jenna Coleman was again in top form and was really good in this story.  Clara as a character has grown a lot from being the impossible girl to what she is today.  She is actually using some brains in figuring out the plan by tricking the Sheriff and she also has no problems of being really sarcastic to The Doctor.  I like her being sarcastic to The Doctor as it works really well and works well with Peter Capaldi as there is really good chemistry there.  

Robot of Sherwood is a story that I had low expectations going into and ending up enjoying it.  It was a story that did not take it self all too seriously and in the end it ended up being very entertaining and funny which comes as a nice change of pace for Doctor Who.

Grade B +

Who Reviews Deep Breath by Jeffrey Zyra

Directed by Ben Wheatley
Written by Steven Moffat

Broadcast 23^rd August 2014

“We will reach the promise land.”

After a 7 ½ month wait Doctor Who has returned and more importantly we are finally treated to Peter Capaldi’s first episode as The Doctor.  Deep Breath has materialized.  Excitement fills the air worldwide, as thousands of fans are gathering around to get their first glimpse of the new Doctor.  So was I as I eagerly waited for August 23^rd. I was really anxious to see Peter Capaldi take center stage and to see his first proper story Deep Breath and here is what I thought of the debut of Series 8 and the Capaldi era.

First impressions are always important more so in Doctor Who when a new Doctor takes over.  More important than when a new creative team is running the show as the lead actor is integral to the show’s success.  If the lead actor is not good or favourable with the fans the show will struggle.  Even if the scripts are magnificent a poor Doctor will sink the ship.  After watching Deep Breath twice we do not have to worry about Peter Capaldi being a bad Doctor.  No we have nothing to worry about here.  While watching Deep Breath it seemed to me as if Peter Capaldi was born to play The Doctor.  You don’t get the feeling of an actor going through the motions or acting as well as he can because it is his job. There have been a few of those more recently. Christopher Eccleston.  

Now you get an actor who seems passionate about being The Doctor and taking care with the way his Doctor is portrayed.  But it’s only been one episode so far, so how can you tell just by watching his debut story?  Well go back and watch Robot and the way Tom Baker approached the part in his debut story and you get the same feeling with Peter Capaldi that was there when Tom Baker took over in 1975.   So far I am really enjoying what I have seen from Peter Capaldi and I am really excited to see more of his performances during Series 8 as I believe they will be superb.

With a new Doctor comes changes.  One of the most noticeable ones is with the theme tune and opening credits.   The opening credits were pretty spectacular as it was a steam punk style with cogs from a clock floating around and then you see the Roman numerals that adorn a clock face.  Now this is quite the change as most opening credits are the time vortex or space.   I really like them as they are different and they tried to do something different rather than do the same old same old.  Now the theme music was more subdued and laid back.  That will take some time to get used to as it wasn't in the style of the 'in your face' type of theme.  But on hearing it a couple times now it is starting to grow on me.  I give them credit for going in a different direction with the theme and opening, as it does spruce up the place a bit.

So what about the story as a whole?  Well in my opinion it was kind of lacking in a story.   There were some fun moments and some good serious moments but it just seemed like that, moments.  Once we got past the whole Doctor in his post regeneration wackiness and the T- Rex in the Thames the story did seem to get interesting somewhat.  To me Deep Breath was mediocre and not very strong.  The 11^th Hour was a far superior début story as it was clever and gave The Doctor something to deduce and find a way to save the day.  With Deep Breath it just seemed to be 'oh by the way here are some robots go and stop them'.  It was good to see similar robots from 'The Girl In The Fireplace' and to harken on that theme again.  Trouble was it was done a lot better in 'The Girl In The Fireplace.'

I do have to say the robots were freaky as you could see in the main robot’s head,  the gears moving inside and the eye moving and seeing it connected to the robot part.  If anything for a mediocre story Deep Breath did have some scary moments which is a good thing to get the kids behind the sofa.

I did like all the scenes inside the restaurant and below in the spaceship as they were well done and Clara was handled really well as she stood up to the robot and dared it to kill her.  That was a pretty good character builder as we get to learn more about Clara and what type of a person she is.  One that has learned from her past mistakes and one that will not be pushed around any more.   What did confuse me a bit about Clara is her reaction to The Doctor’s regeneration.  In 'The Name of The Doctor' she goes through his time stream and saves his life, meeting up with all the different versions of The Doctor.  So why suddenly is she all confused about The Doctor she is with now. If there was one companion who should know about the different Doctor’s it would be Clara.  If anything her leeriness about the new Doctor did give us a pretty cool cameo by the 11^th Doctor calling Clara from Trenzalore before he regenerates telling her to help the new guy and to trust  him.  That was pretty cool and something else they never did before. 

Deep Breath also gives us some insight into what to expect for the rest of the series as there is a woman claiming to be The Doctor’s girlfriend.  The mysterious Missy who is in a place she calls Heaven that might just be the woman who gave Clara the phone number to call The Doctor.  A mystery has unfolded and it will be fun to see how it works itself out as the series progresses.  Deep Breath may not have been the greatest story Steven Moffat has written and it is not the worst, but it is what it is - an average story.  It had some good moments with The Doctor confronting the robots and some decent action sequences.   It also gave us some comedy moments some of which were overdone with Strax which have become predictable and not as funny any more.   With that aside Deep Breath is not my favorite début story and it is by far not my least favorite. If anything we had a great performance by Peter Capaldi that shed any fear that he might not be a great Doctor.

Grade C +